2008: reflections

teddy greybear is hammering away at the door, meowing and demanding, and that is enough to remind me that one thing i gained was him, and another thing i lost, which was thing. they aren't the same, but they are both alike in many ways. probably the biggest way is that they both consistently gave me comfort and loved me.

this year was good in a lot of ways, and then there were losses. besides thing, there was the death of my friend bette, and tom's dad bill. warnie has rapidly slid away into a sort of childlike twilight, and that is hard to see, but then again, it is acceptable. my brother certainly had a bad year, and the beating in september is scaring for everyone. but he did get a new dog, canyon, who has been a great good for him. for me, there has probably been more than a year long loss of me. i haven't been right for a long time. life has been blah sort of, nothing greatly exciting, although there were things that should have excited me. i am thinking now that most of that has been chemical, but i just didn't realize how much had been dripping away until recently.

so i am starting off the new year in a better frame of mind. i must add that it is chemically induced. my new doctor switched me to cymbalta to replace the lexapro. this is a good thing i am hoping. i am already feeling better, with more energy and more desire to do something. i am following through with plans, which i haven't done in such a long time. i am not just tired and in pain all the time. this is all good, and i hope that it continues. i won't know i guess for awhile if this frame of mind will stay steady, but i am hoping that the cymbalta and the mega doses of vitamin d will put me in some place where i feel like i have something to go forward for. i have just been plodding through for a long time.

there were a lot of positives in the last year. the 3 week REB trip certainly was the culmination of a gift of a lifetime. i saw so much that i had never seen before, but i was stressed out most of the time and fighting with austin. had i had the good drugs then, i might have had a better time of it, but i still got to go, and i still had fun.

shelley and bart came and stayed for a week during spring break and learned then that i can actually have people stay with me and not be stressed out. that was certainly a first. pam and i are planning to go to seattle this summer, so that is something to look forward to.

austin's life has been a series of peaks and valleys with baseball. in june we discover that he can throw an over 90 MPH fastball, but then he breaks his hand in a freak accident in the junior olympics. he is out of baseball for the summer, doesn't get ranking, but then comes the fall and all of a sudden, he is now on the radar. he has a grueling, but productive fall, goes to basketball out of shape and overweight. his high school baseball coach is disgruntled because he isn't working out off season with the team. the basketball coach is also disgruntled for the same reason. austin is playing basketball, but the team hasn't done well particularly and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why. and then yesterday, he broke his big toe. yet another pesky injury, just when he needs to start looking closely at the baseball. i don't know if this is another sign or what. there just seems to be no rhyme or reason to his being constantly close to being in the spotlight, and then out of it. it is almost as if god keeps pulling him and saying "wait a minute. chill out."

managing his "career" and watching over all he does has been a tremendous strain. combine that with a myriad of health issues for so long, and you have the flat lined me. but i am hoping i can get to a point where i can relax. i have already seen some improvement in that i have read 3 or 4 books since i have been home, have cleaned up and done things that i have put off for a long time, and have started back piddling with my jewelry. i have ordered books to learn how to use my computer programs, and i got through xmas relatively unscathed. i have slept more, and enjoyed my animals.

this last year seems to have been one of peaks and valleys, but none of them devastatingly awful or gloriously wonderful. it in many ways has been a growing year and a learning year. my job has changed, and i have let a lot of things go in that direction. i am watching austin grow up and out before my eyes, and i have had a lot of feelings about being left alone and in the dust by him. there has been a lot of argument between the two of us over the house and his doing what i expect him to do for grades. it has been a year where i can freely admit that i have no control over him, and i have felt very much hurt by him on more than a few occasions. bebo has been better and easier to get along with, but he can be guaranteed to do something that i can't anticipate. i have had a lot of jealously about austin's wanting to hang out at bebo's and i have been pretty open about that. i think if austin ever acted like he cared about me or my feelings, i wouldn't been so depressed about it. but maybe that will change. he has been with bebo for a week, but he has been ok to me when i have seen him. (i drove up to stanardsville two days in a row to watch one basketball game.) he did thank me for coming and hugged and kissed me. i have learned this year that i do need human touch.

i am thankful for good friends and comfort. i am thankful for the relative health of my family and the joy of watching my child be successful. i am thankful that despite setbacks, i am still alive and still have a brain. i am very thankful that they make good drugs...:)

happy holidays from the furry felines!

twas the day before winter break...

have managed to get to the end of this week with my brains intact and no visible signs of disease. since the stomach flu is going around, i consider that an accomplishment. austin has some of it on monday and went home early, and i felt a little icky too. but i went to bed that night at 7:30 and slept all the way through, so i think that helped.

it has been so far an interesting yet frustrating season of basketball. austin seems somehow to have gotten himself on the shit list of the coach. not sure exactly how that is, but i have to admit that from my standpoint, he has looked a little sluggish. he has done fine when he has played, but i think the asthma has become a problem. he is using the inhaler, sometimes twice or three times a game. i don't know if that has anything to do with it. i do know that austin has developed an attitude and is having problems with the coach's decisions. i can't say that i disagree. i haven't been able to figure out yet exactly what the coach is trying to do with the team. there is absolutely no consistency in the game plans and frankly, they don't seem to make sense. last night they played patrick henry and just nothing was working. in the second half he basically took out all of the starters, including austin, and put in the scrubs. they ended up losing by 2 points, which was good considering at points we had been down by 15. but it does make you wonder what might have happened if he had played the better players. i don't know much about basketball, so i guess i can't second guess what the coach is doing. but i don't think the players understand it either.

i bought the griddler for my brother today for a xmas present. it was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but i felt like he should have something nice for xmas since the parents aren't apparently doing anything. he has had a crappy year, no doubt about it.

there is snow in the western states and i am seeing that the temps are down in seattle and are staying down. they apparently have had snow, and i had a message from triest and rexburg has been pretty much inundated with it over the last few days. she said it was nice snow too, wet big flakes. i would kill for some snow and cold weather. we get a couple of days of it, and then boom, back to 50-60-70 degrees. it is very discouraging. no wonder everyone is sick.

i still have xmas stuff to do, in particular baking and putting up the yard lights. i am hoping that will get done this weekend. we'll see. i am ready for a break.

currently the month of december has been the month for reading about the undead. i have just finished TWILIGHT about vampires. i had to push myself through that one, even though it is the hot book right now. i read it because all the kids are reading it. i also started another one called WORLD WAR Z which george herring wanted me to read. this one is about zombies. then i read a manga japanese book, backwards, and that was all about monsters and killing and a notebook of the dead. i think it is time to quit with the dead stuff. time to catch up on all of my magazines and a couple of books i checked out for my own pleasure. i have done mostly reading of stuff that would be potentially for summer reading or new stuff in the classroom. i did read a book called WINTER RUN that i thought might be interesting to redneck boys. george seemed to think that the zombie book might be good for the boys. however, i have not found it to be engrossing since it has no plot.

making some progress in my MONK world

ONCE AGAIN, i have been graced with a week of off again/on again headaches. on tuesday i came home from school, took the excedrin and got a brief nap before i had to deliver austin back to school for his basketball game, which i went to. i slept amongst the cats, but didn't really sleep. so wednesday i did the doctor and slept in with the headache.

the new doctor, dr. woodson, took the time and seemingly the interest to talk to me. she had some ideas about fibromyalgia and does not believe that it is a mental thing. thank god. she agreed with me that the lexapro was probably not working and rather than jack up the dosage, she wrote me a prescription for cymbalta, the newest best thing. apparently, this is one that works well for people with fibromyalgia. she also gave me a prescription for midrin. unfortunately, the cymbalta has to be preapproved by my health insurance. i don't have it yet.

austin was at bebo's this weekend until today. i went and got him and we went to trader joe's and bought stuff for brenda, danny and olivia for their xmas gift basket. we went to whole foods market and ate a bunch of really expensive stuff, and then to kohl's, where austin bought amy a necklace with a square blue zircon on it. he had previously bought a silver chain, but couldn't find anything he liked to put on it. he and amy dragged out the xmas stuff, but it was too dark to put it up and she was not enthused about doing that. so it is supposed to now be put up tomorrow afternoon after school. we'll see.

i did have some energy this weekend and did some shopping yesterday for austin and got him done. i also bought stuff for the twins and jack online, cooked veggie beef soup and made some indian curry stuff with jasmine rice. i went to walmart and did my shopping there first thing in the morning, and i have been pretty productive. i also went to joey's hot dogs in the gas station on ridgefield parkway and talked to joey for a long timel. it turns out that he is the youngest son of the guy, tony, of tony's hotdogs in norfolk. when i was a kid, daddy used to take me there and i remember it a lot. maybe my love of hot dogs comes from that.

saturday night i decorated the xmas tree with lights and ornaments land put up xmas stuff. today i also finally spackled the wall on the stairs and sanded it down. all i need to do now is paint it. i made a list of xmas stuff and pretty much has most everything done sans cooking, which i will have to do later this week or on tuesday of next week when i come home.

my energy levels have been up a bit and i have felt like doing stuff. i took a bunch of pictures of the cats today and tonight, which i had been wanting to do. i also have been reading the TWILIGHT book which is all the rage with the kids these days and the rest of the world as well (the movie just came out.) i am having a hard time with it, as it is very slow and methodical and, frankly, boring to me. but i am reading it as part of the summer reading possibilities. i have watched a lot of stuff on the dvr, including a lot of old carole lombard movies (2oth century with john barrymore), and several MONK episodes, History Detectives, and general stuff i had taped like LAW & ORDER, ELI STONE, and i also have watched some more of THE OFFICE on the DVD player. i talked to MJ today in paris, and have kept up with meg and dr. trotti's surgery. he seems to be doing fine and was being moved to a real room today. they took about 80% of his stomach, and there is still some tumor behind it. however, they think they can kill what is left with chemo. i don't know when he will start that.

this week should be an easy week. i am showing OF MICE AND MEN for 4 of the days, and giving the unit test to the advanced kids tomorrow and tuesday. hopefully, i will get caught up finally on grading of papers. austin has two basketball games this week (highland springs and patrick henry, and both are away). sometime in there i have to make my stuff and pack things to be shipped out (linda, shelley and bart, maybe triest and joanna.) i could be a busy week...

everyone in india gets a wristwatch...

ok, it isn't politically correct to rail against foreigners in this country. land of the free, home of the brave, we all got here on a boat somehow, etc. however, sometimes it can get a little frustrating dealing with people who are "half-cultured" americans (or not, as the case may be).

last night i dropped austin and amy off at applebees for amy's birthday dinner, and i went to walmart. i was casually drifting through the store shopping when they called, unexpectedly early, for me to pick them up.

i still had to check out, and mistakenly picked a line with three hindu women. they were not dressed in traditional garb, but did have the cast marks in the middle of the forehead. while they spoke in their language, they were doing american things, like using a credit card. however, they put a new twist on shopping by checking out, and then UNCHECKING out.

sometimes you don't have enough money to pay for items, so you put them back. i can see that if you only have x amount of cash. but with a credit card? the first woman was finishing up when i dragged up. i should have suspected something was up by the growing mound of clothing that was gathering around the cashier.

the second woman unloaded her stuff (she has plenty of time since the first woman was lolly gagging along). then she decided when the total was flashed that it was too much. so then comes the slow process of digging through the several bags of items pulling out one, checking it back in, and then pulling a sub total. for some reason she just finally landed on a price and that should have been it. however, she had a pair of black socks that were apparently without a price code. this now involved snagging another employee to go back to sock world for a price check. while i was leaning on my cart with every growing exasperation, austin calls and wants to know where i am. i can't explain to him that i am in the middle of the mumbai bazaar, and there is no verbal explanation i can give him given my current "company" that would explain what was going on. finally, hindu chick #2 is done, although she doesn't do much moving away.

then i watch in amazement as hindu chick #3 unloads her cart, which includes 12 WRISTWATCHES. twelve. i counted them, thinking that everyone in india must be getting a watch. then, incredibly, the scene from chick #2 duplicates itself. Hindu chick #3 begins to dig through the bags and pull out various and sundry things, including 3 of the watches (oh well, someone won't be able to tell what time to move the elephants.) and we once again go through the arduous task of picking and choosing what to keep, what to pay for, again, with a credit card (which she didn't know how to use.)

it took me 20 minutes to check out. when i left, in a lather, the three were still standing there at the end of the counter jabbering and apparently in no hurry to go anywhere. at this point i have had my coat off three times because i am in such a sweat. it is raining outside, and the kids are waiting for me at kohls.

i wondered how it is that you could do something like that three times in a row. is that what they do in pakistan or india or where ever? did they think they were going to get to barter about things when the bill rang up? all i know was that if they couldn't pay for it, they shouldn't have rung it up. i also figure that if you don't know about money, and you are from another country and can't speak the language, how in hell do you get a credit card?

another ridiculous hair tale...

when you reach my age you have to accept one of life's little not-so-amusing jokes, which is woman face hair. in my case, i feel like billy goat's gruff. not only do i have it on my chin, but i am beginning to feel like i have swirly fur all over my face. and my eyebrows...well, some of the hairs have taken on a life of their own and i swear they are so long that you could braid them.

but i digress.

last night at the last moment i decided to wax my face with the little nail wax strips. i rubbed them between my hands until the wax was melted, then carefully peeled them apart. i went to put the side i wasn't using down, and damned if it didn't leap from my hands...and land on my cell phone.

don't ask what the cellphone was doing on the bathroom counter. it was just there, apparently begging to be waxed. the strip was stuck to the side of the phone, so i pulled it off as gently as i could and then put the strip on my chin. i then proceeded to rip hair out of my chin and noticed, of course, that i hadn't gotten everything and what i had gotten was sticking out of my face with little white wax pieces standing on the end. my chin now looked like a very short bristle brush.

i still had another strip left, i don't know what happened, again, but this time as i was trying to apply it to the other part of my face, it again was magnetized by the cell phone, and it came out of my hands and landed flat, this time, on the phone. i ripped it off, leaving most of the wax on the phone, put the strip on my face and got practically nothing off, and then went to try and dewax the phone.

the nail people give you these little wet packs that have a moist towelette in it, but this one isn't like the ones you get in the rib or chicken place. this one is soaked in oil. you use it to take the wax tips off you face and soothe the skin. well, i used mine to do that first, and then to try and get the wax off the cell phone. unfortunately, it didn't go quite as i planned. this time the more i rubbed the phone with the oily towelette thing, the more fuzz rubbed off of the towelette, so now the phone not only is sticky with wax, but art imitates life...the cell phone has a white fuzz growing all over it.

i tried to wipe the oil off (i had it all over my fingers and all over my phone) and the quickest way to do that was impulse...i rubbed the phone on my chest, now giving a perfect replica of the cell phone on my chest in oil...sort of like the shroud of turin for cell phones...so now i have a giant grease spot on my shirt, the phone has just grown another set of hair in the wax due to the additional fuzz it has picked up from my shirt, and i still have curly q's hanging under my chin...plus i now also look like my face has been burned in certain places. i have to resort to climbing up on the sink with my glasses off and trying to pull chin hairs off with a very uncooperative set of tweezers.

i finally just quit. i did go after the moustache, but gave up on that too. no attempt was made to calm down the eyebrows, which seem to have hairs that wave in the wind and wink at you. imagine a small peninsula of palm trees growing on you face, little tiny ones waving in the breeze, two of these hair islands, separated by the gulf of my nose...

body hair issues apparently are going to just haunt me. the good news is that the wax is off the cellphone and it has baby smooth skin. other good news is that i have absolutely no intent on ever getting anything (fire, wax, tweezers) in the vicinity of my crotch. between torching my head hair and ripping off my face hair, i don't think i want to do anything south of the border...

xmas tales from the foxhole:scheduled insanity

well, here we go...

how does one schedule insanity and place all the inmates?

i have been on the phone with the brother, the aunt and uncle, the cousins trying to figure out how to do the xmas schedule for xmas week.

things are not working out the way i would like. gee, some surprise there...

conflicts and problems for the week are as follows:

xmas day-thursday. must leave the beach and take austin back to bebo by 2pm. there austin will stay for who knows how long. he has to be with his father, but no one knows how long. more on that later

xmas eve-wednesday.family dinner at zia marias. xmas eve day may be the only time to get together with warnie, aunt grace and ted. previous years we have eaten chinese at warnies, but she doesn't live there anymore. not sure what will happen and where with that, but something will. but when? my suggestion would be to meet for dinner or food somewhere that day near her nursing home, but that is yet to be determined. toddy suggested that they come over on...

tuesday 12/23: when the family lasagna gets made and eaten. but ted is a vegetarian and the sauce has meat in it and meatballs. my mother gripes about aunt grace trying to make sure he has vegetarian before he gets there and this irks my mother. why, i don't know as i was a vegetarian for 10 years and it didn't seem to be a problem with me doing it, only ted. and ted is too nice to mention it. it is the fact that aunt grace demands it (in my mother's opinion.) it just irritates my mother and we already have tension in that area anyway.
also on tuesday is xmas dinner at brenda/danny/olivia davis' home...in richmond. can't be in two places at one time. we have always gone there for the last 5 years and i actually look forward to that one. but i think that isn't going to work out now, since we would only have xmas day down there and austin doesn't want to go for just one day.
monday 12/22: the cousins have suggested something new for the family, which is a progressive dinner starting with drinks/appetizers at uncle bert and aunt nancy's house. then the main meal at amy's house and dessert at susan's house. that doesn't have to happen, and depends a lot on when my brother shows up, another whole deal.

i called the bro and said make up your mind, so as of a couple of hours ago he was going to drive. that makes it easier for him to come and go when he wants, which may be that he can come home later and stay longer. if he stays longer, could the lasagna dinner be postponed until after xmas? but that also can be a problem, in that what amount of time is austin going to spend with his father and when? we know that xmas day he will have to be there, and that is ok. but what about the next day? the cousins can't switch the time for the progressive, we don't know when the bro is coming, i have the conflict on tuesday, and amy/todd and jack are leaving for tennessee and todd's family the day AFTER xmas.

it is waaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy too complicated. and i haven't bothered to float any of this to my mother yet, which probably will be the usual disaster. as my brother said, it doesn't matter anyway what we do, because she likes to control xmas. he and i did agree that we would not fight with each other. that certainly is good considering the disaster of last xmas.

somewhere in here i have to decide if i am going to do anything holiday oriented here...sigh.

sunday in the rain and cold

it appeals to me.
the temp is in the mid forties, it is raining and by all accounts nasty, but i like it. it is hunkering down weather. i am wet from loading and unloading groceries from the car and walmart. i picked a good time to go, for i knew the rest of the world would not be venturing out doing xmas shopping. i chose correctly.

stupid stuff got bought, and that is ok. i bought myself some much needed jeans and the cats got a bunch of stuff, including a new shedding brush and a xmas sweater to be shared by all and pictures taken. i also bought a laser light mouse, which was cheap and i had been looking for a laser pointer. they got food and kitty litter and i also bought some stuff to spray to keep them from shredding my sofa covers. likely won't work, but it was worth a try. i need a little levity around here. cats in xmas sweaters chasing laser lights sounds good to me...

my big job today is to run the sweeper and clean the kitchen floors. they are just nasty. the cats, in particular teddy, are tracking crap all over the house. they are also fighting and i keep finding little tuffs of someone's hair in the floor. freckles has a big chunk out of her back and teddy has a shred in his ear. olive is still recovering from the giant gash she got a month or so ago when she had a throwdown with freckles. the only smart one is olivia who does not engage in unladylike behavior. she is the only one actually playing with teddy. he and freckles have a no growl clause in their contracts, both being allies against the formidable olive. what a bitch she is!

once again i have purchased weird stuff to cook, none of it a particularly necessary choice for food consumption. i saw this recipe on DINERS, DRIVE INS AND DIVES that i liked. it is supposed to be wrapped in egg roll wrappers and deep fried. there were no egg roll wrappers at walmart (go figure), so i decided putting it in a burrito would probably do. or not. we'll see. i also bought more short ribs and i think i might make that into something different other than the beef soup i was surviving on all last week. pork and sausage also got bought. guy fieri says he is a POP...pal of pork. so be i.

xmas music of the new age variety is on the stereo and i have papers to read, food to cook, and the rest of the day by myself. i am getting a real taste of life alone and it isn't all that bad. tomorrow back to school and the next couple of weeks with holiday excited children.

trying to sharpen the edges

this morning i decided i needed to do something, anything, to make myself feel a bit alive. so i got into my car with my wawa cup and just drove off. i ended up on cherokee road driving along the river west and on to old gun road.

i was taken with the quiet and the relaxed, calming look of those houses perched along the river's edge. it was upstream from the huguenot bridge and before the wiley bridge. one house was up on the ridge, looking down at the river field below it. there was a series of decks climbing down. the house itself was an older model, probably at least 40 years ago. the architecture reminded me of warnie and uncle harry's neighborhood in norfolk.

the houses were large and some were new, some were old. bellona arsenal was taking up a huge area along the river at one point around where cherokee blended into old gun road. that was what appeared to be a working farm, with cows and barns and trees. you couldn't see the river from the road, but it felt very civil war era-ish. the brick remains of the arsenal are in a curve along the road, with a huge house on the other side of the road looking down on the ruins. there were lots of huge houses, most of them almost of another era, but huge enough to be impressive...the way the other half lives. there are a lot of trees leafing over the road and surrounding most of those homes. some of the homes had long driveways and brick columns at the ends of the driveways. most of the houses were way to big to be lived in by me, but i kept thinking that if i had a lot of money, i would buy that red house with the decks and porch. i almost wanted to stop and take a picture of it. it seemed like it could have been the cover for a george winston album. at the time i was playing the "Christmas Blessings-Narada Xmas collection vol. 3" which is new age, ethereal kind of music.

once i left this area, i wandered back south into the area of southside that i grew up in in chesterfield. i ended up driving down roads that i drove around on a lot 35-40 years ago. i guess i was thinking that a trip down memory lane would make me feel better. instead, i was almost lost the whole way. the way i see the world is the imprint of what i see now over the picture of what it was. it is almost like there are 2 levels of viewing. but today, that wasn't happening, simply because the landscape had changed so radically that there was no connection between the views. i drove around to providence middle school, and for the most part that had not changed. i was reminded as i drove slowly past of my first kiss. a boy named randy white kissed me during the halftime of an afternoon basketball game, and we were leaning against the building next to the door.

i drove the back way into surreywood and got lost. this is because all that i was driving through had been nothing but thick woods, a place to explore, when i was a kid. we used to follow paths through the fields and woods with our pocket knives. there was a stream to cross where someone had built a makeshift bridge, and paths on the other side where they ran coon dogs at night. i used to listen to them at night in the winter, and it was a beautiful, bell like sound. that sound, combined with crisp winter air and the smell of leaves burning or woodsmoke from chimneys is one of my better enduring memories of childhood. in those days there were absolutely no houses and only a few, unpaved roads. there was a big old stone outcropping that we walked to and sat on a lot. now it is decoration in someone's front yard. how would they ever know that place in it's original form? we used to sled down that hill in the snow as well. even when i lived there, they were always carving out more and more roads, building more and more houses. but there were always woods and paths. you just had to walk a little further. but now, they don't exist, not at all. the trees that were young then are 40 years older now, more bark, bigger, more shady branches. but what is beneath them is no longer crisp, crushed leaves and blackened paths made by the feet of dogs and children wandering through the woods looking for something.

so i didn't really sharpen the edges much, and when i left, i went out of the world of trees and shaded homes into the glare of shopping centers and run down storage places, made over fast food places, garages, cheap junky places. i followed hull street into the city, and then turned back on to jahnke road to go to the apartment complex i lived in for 5 years. i had a hard time finding it because the trees had grown up, the apartment complexes were now surrounded by streets and homes that didn't exist 20 years ago. and st. john's woods is no longer a woods. it isn't even an apartment complex that i could see. it appears that the trees are gone, replaced by condos out shining in the light, so exposed. and i keep thinking about all of the wild and furtive things that so many of us did in that apartment complex. it was sort of a traveling social gathering, everyone knowing everyone else, moving from one apartment to another, one drama to the next. not there now, just like that life came and went. things were a lot fuzzier for me as i crossed back over the the river. for a while when i first started that trek, i was thinking that i wanted to go back there, but i realize that doesn't exist anymore and the person i was doesn't exist in that form either.

it kinda makes you wonder what makes you what you are. i find a lot of comfort returning to spots of that movie, and i plunge in with music and maybe watching old tv shows or slick 70's movies with the cheesy suits and god awful haircuts. the funny thing is that at the time, i wasn't really a part of that either, and i wasn't happy.

so when have i been happy? and the answer is i guess that i am still searching for that extended time. it has been brief in places. i spent so much of my life in depression, and then there were drugs. thank god for better living through modern chemistry. at least i have had the middle ground for a long time. but i think i am slipping below the line now, and i think i have been doing that for a long while. now i am at the point where i just don't care, which means i guess that i OUGHT to care. the lack of caring about just about anything is what is making me see that i have to find something to fix this. i am wasting a lot of light.

another black friday in the foxhole!

i spent black friday in my house eating everything i could get my hands on and watching everything i could in my on demand files on comcast. nice, huh?

today, i hope to venture out of the house with no particular place to go and actually do something that leads to something fun. what does that mean?

i think a lot about doing stuff, like riding my bike, or talking a walk out in the woods behind the house. maybe sitting still on the deck at dusk. i think also about finishing painting the hall stairways so i could finish with the banister repair. i think also about cleaning my room, and cleaning the kitchen floors. i did take a shower and i do have clean clothes. however, i do also have a mound of unclean castoffs, and a lot of things that i should do.

considering my state of "blah" and considering my new found love of being in the foxhole, it is likely time to explore the possibility of more "ammunition" which for me means changing my medicine. i just don't think i can go into this xmas season without a few things to protect myself. attitude at xmas is everything, and if you are not prepared for the war, you will be surely shredded. considering my current cole slaw status, it is probably a good idea to force myself to get medical advice and to try and get myself a little bit up off of the ground. i am not depressed in the old way i was before drugs, but i think the reality is that i am somewhat depressed and i am starting to feel like a candidate for one of the depression on tv commercials. cimbalta anyone?

i think i could put up with most anything if i just had some enthusiasm for something, anything. i am not reading, i am listless, and i just don't care about even the basic stuff, like keeping my house clean, or looking terrific (like that every happens even in the perfectly drug balanced world!) i just can't get interested or excited about anything, and i am way too sensitive to everything. i can cry at the drop of a hat and get mad irrationally over things that i should just blow off. mostly i am feeling a lot unappreciated and devalued. i am not sure how to rectify this situation other than to get some medical help. i should have done that a long time ago, but like everything else, i just don't care enough to do anything about it.

however, it is xmas, my least favorite time of the year, and i just don't want to be a crushed cornflake when it is all over. i would like to want to cook or shop for people. right now, i don't. so off to a hopefully new doctor on monday. i will try and make the appointment with the doctor meg recommended to me and see what happens.

At the SF Giants game this summer! I love SF!

thanksgiving 2008

it was a very easy day. i like thanksgiving. no gifts. good food. no pressure. just eat, jawbone, go home. i showed up with kale, made the gravy, carved the turkey, made mashed potatoes, and helped pam with the dilemma of what to do with the rolls...they were a little too wet. more flour, a bit more time to rise, and they came out fine.
austin had thanksgiving with his father and his family. i hung around at pam's longer than i thought i would. it is cold outside and the sky is clear. i love the smell of the woodsmoke coming from the wood burning furnace at pam's house. i downloaded pam's reb trip pictures, although i am missing a chunk (473-627) and it took forever. i talked a little politics with taylor and i rocked baby madelyn to sleep while everyone else ate. that, in itself, was a miracle, since i don't do babies. but she was sweet, sucking on her fingers because she is cutting some teeth. so she and i sat in the tv room watching football while i whispered to her "baseball!baseball!" and did a little reiki.

cold now in virginia

finally, the weather has gotten colder. while my bones feel pretty achy, my spirits are up. i like fall, and i like the cold. gloomy doesn't bother me, and the smells are very comforting.

baseball is over for now, and the focus has switched to basketball for the next couple of months. austin will continue with the pitching lessons the first weekend in december, and then back on a more regular basis after the first of the year. he is still in contact with various coaches and we are trying to start arranging for visits to the various campuses, including uva and clemson. unc probably will not sign him. unlv has offered him basically a full ride for everything. if he stays healthy, he should have some good options.

i am looking forward to this coming weekend, when i don't have to go out of town or down to prince george all weekend for baseball. while it has been sort of fun watching things snowball for austin, it has been way too exhausting for me. i have had exactly 2 unplanned weekends home since sept. 1. i need some down time along with some sleep. my house is a mess and is pretty reflective of my life, which is piles of this and that everywhere, with me just picking from the piles.

the windows are open in my room each night, the cats are all around, and the xm radio lulls me to sleep at night. while i am tired and i hurt all the time, i am ok. i am looking forward to thanksgiving and then i get to start dreading xmas....

the office...and the joys of a little dvd player

austin b is in my lst block class and every thursday he wears his dwight schute t-shirt. thursday is the day that THE OFFICE comes on tv. i happened to ask once i think about the shirt and thus ensued a campaign to get me to watch THE OFFICE so i would understand. the campaign ended with the season 3 dvd.

season 3 hung around my house for more than a month until i finally put it into my austin's dvd player one night a couple of weeks ago. it was like watching a train wreck! the lack of social skills of the characters is so appalling that you almost want to hide your face! i can only liken my fascination with this tv horror to my addiction to ROCK OF LOVE a couple of years ago. that, too was horrid...and i kept watching it. skanky, nasty, stupid chicks all competing to be bret michael's "rock of love" and, boy, the things women will do to cut each other out...

THE OFFICE...well, i am off to watch disc 2 of the set...

finally, election OVER!

i stayed home yesterday and i did vote. i didn't feel too good about it, and i still don't feel anything about this election other than i am glad it is over with, period. it has been one long, drawn out cat fight and i think we have all bled just a little.

my hope is that those who are happy that obama was elected do not gloat. i also hope that those who hate him do not stir the sparks of racism and create a greater schism between whites and blacks.

in many ways i wish that i could be excited by obama and what he may bring to the white house. i suppose i am just numbed out about everything political. i would like to believe, but i just can't. i guess i have turned into an old skeptic and a negative one at that. i fear, as do many, that some nutcase will take a pot shot at him. should he be killed, i cannot imagine the repercussions that would reverberate across this country. whatever has brought us together to this historic point could just as easily be taken away and reversed. but i guess i need to develop some faith, faith that people are basically good, as ann frank said in her diary. that somewhere in this crazy world people still believe in helping each other and working for a greater good than just the almighty dollar.

drama magnet, part I

i can't figure out how it is that i manage to offend people in such innocuous ways. i enjoy writing o this blog, but for the life of me, i can't understand how doing this could become a problem. in the years i have kept it, i have never gotten a comment, period. i made the name for the blog one that wasn't connected to me in any way, and one in which, unless you had the address, you couldn't find me. yet someone did, and complained about a post i made.

had it been just a stranger, then i would have probably blown it off. but it was some family member of bette's, and she and her family were appalled that i had written about bette on my blog for all the world to see. first, i can't imagine how in hell they would have been able to find my blog, or why they were even looking. secondly, i just talk to myself since no one knows i am here. bette's death was shocking and horrible. i wrote about it for myself. but i deleted it at the "family's request." and now i feel terrible. i didn't do anything to try and harm anyone. it was just for me, like a diary. the worst part of this is that i worked with bette for years, was aware of what was going on with her, tried to help her, have contributed to the fund for her, and was appalled at how her death was handled, both by the school people and the medical system that failed her. her family doesn't know me, except her sister, and i guess everyone deals with things differently.

i can't win. but i did go and remove the blog from any way to be viewed from the outside other than by invitation, and now i am not inviting anyone. i think only 3 people even know i have it out there, so i guess i will just put them on the ok list and let it fly.

stephen s

my associations with children's hospital here in richmond have been positive. while i knew that this was a hospital for children with many physical ills, i had never seen that part of the hospital. my comings and goings had been strictly to have austin evaluated for gifted status. and that was it. what an eye opening experience this past friday was for me.

for the first time since his accident, i went to see my student, stephen. he is lying in a bed in a colorful room in a sunny, pleasant wing. he is facing a large red stuffed frog, and one eye blinks, the other does not. i don't know if he knew who i was, or what he knows at all . what i do know is that i was not prepared for what i saw, and i am ashamed to say i was shocked.

first, i knew that they had removed a part of his skull and that it is in a freezer somewhere. this was to allow the swelling in his brain to go down. but i wonder if they removed part of his brain as well. the one side of his head is just a crater. is the brain that small?

he has grown a great deal. his hands are larger and i couldn't help but think that would have helped his guitar playing. they had him dressed in a t-shirt with guitars on it, and his ipod was on the stand next to the bed. around the room were still posters and pictures and someone had put halloween things on the window. and it is october, the end of it, and stephen has been gone from us since the beginning of march. i did reiki on him, but i don't think he was there. but i just guess you have to have faith. his parents certainly do. i am not sure that he will come back to us, but i wish it.

and it makes me greatful for what i have, and it makes me wonder about all of the lessons that could be learned from watching him, watching his family. he may never do another thing in his life short of blinking one eye occasionally. but he is still a stone in the pond, and the ripples, ah, the ripples that he has made...

teddy greybear

Every once in awhile you get a hunch and you act on it. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. in any case, i don't think much happens without a reason, and such is the case with teddy greybear.

i woke up on a recent saturday thinking about o.c., the cat that i had considered adopting back in july. i had seen that o.c. was still not adopted yet, and i woke up this particular morning and something said "go to petsmart." i did.

i didn't know for sure if o.c. would be there. it is sort of hit and miss as to which cats are brought out each weekend for adoption. but i drove on out to short pump anyway in hopes he would be there. he was. i was looking at him in the cage, and something said to me, this isn't the cat. i knew immediately, and i felt bad because no one has taken him. but i happen to glance at the cage next to him, and there he was...teddy G.

the sign said "part maine coon" and he is obviously not a purebred. he is smaller, about the size of santini, but he has all of the regular maine coon affectations: the pointed hair on the top of the ears, the bushy tail, the tuffs in his toes. and he is solid grey all the way. i have never seen a solid grey maine coon before.

i asked if he was a male, and they said, yes, he was. he was also declawed, fully vetted, and had only been with the rescue group for a few days. this was his first trip out into the world. this cat had no name...the family that gave him up just called him cat, and apparently they gave him away when their daughter went off to college. something about a dog being liked better.

teddy was the missing cat for me. so i paid $90 (vs. $800 for a purebred) and brought him home hoping he would be okay with the girls. at first, it wasn't. he found a hole under the chair in the san francisco room, and stayed in there for a couple of days. but slowly he started coming out. he is quite a talker and loves to be rubbed on his belly and back. his fun spots are the exact opposite of thing's favorite spots. as a matter of fact, he is the opposite in personality from thing. while he is still skittish, he is around me now. he isn't a lap cat, but he will sit right next to you on the arm of the sofa and around you on the bed, just like thing. however, he is a morning cat, and has a daily routine of following me to the bathroom, jumping up on the sink, and talking. he likes, as evidenced by the picture, to let the water run over his head and then drink it. i have never seen a cat that likes water, but this one does!

the girls have pretty much accepted him, and they still hiss at each other, but so far, so good. olive is jealous, but she would be of any cat. freckles seems to be much happier as she is no longer the low man on the totem pole. he doesn't play with them, but he is around. if you move too fast, he runs. he is still a bit skittish, but he likes reiki!

i haven't seen o.c.'s picture in the paper since then, so i am thinking he was adopted. the rescue lady said there had been some people who had called about him, and i am thinking that this worked out. o.c. got a home, and so did teddy. like all teddy bears, he is sweet and kind, and that is why i named him teddy. all of the ted's and teddy's in my life have been sweet, kind men, and i think this cat is one of those!

the evil that men do...

My need to be a recluse is pretty well documented, but after what happened to my brother on saturday night, i don't think i need any urging to want to escape the human race.

i have been reminded that for the one who was so evil, there were many others who stepped forward to help. that i should be thankful for. but it still does not make me feel any safer or more secure with trusting the human animal.

in a nutshell, he was attacked by a 23-year-0ld drunken russian who broke his nose and then kicked him in the head, breaking 4 molars, chipping his other teeth, cutting his forehead and maybe breaking the orbital bone in his eye. when asked by the arresting officers why he had attacked my brother and his friends, especially after the great lengths they had gone to to avoid a confrontation, he replied "because they are fags."

hopefully, he has no friends who would bail his sorry ass out, and he is still sitting in a cell rotting. but i doubt it. likely, he is loose and on the lam, as is miguel rodriguez and his sister maria who refuse to take responsibility for the car accident they caused. why won't people just behave nicely and do what is right? why attack and hurt people you don't even know?

the physical injuries to my brother will slowly heal, but what about the damage done to his view of the world and of himself?

Daily OM-finding another vantage point

September 16, 2008
Hidden Treasures-Finding Another Vantage Point
The ocean can look very different, depending on whether you are standing at the shore, soaring above in a plane, or swimming beneath its waves. Likewise, a mountain can look very different relative to where you are standing. Each living thing sees the world from its unique vantage point. While from your window you may be seeing what looks like a huge shrub, a bird in its nest is getting an intimate view of that tree’s leafy interior. Meanwhile, a beetle sees only a massive and never-ending tree trunk. Yet all three of you are looking at the same tree. Just as a shadow that is concealed from one point of view is easily seen from another, it is possible to miss a fantastic view. That is, unless you are willing to see what’s in front of you through different eyes. Seeing the world from another perspective, whether spatially or mentally, can introduce you to all sorts of hidden treasures. The root of the discovery process often lies in finding another way of looking at the world. The common human reaction to insects is one example. Spinning its web in a dark corner, a spider may seem drab, frightening, and mysterious. But seen up close weaving silver snowflakes between the branches of a tree, they can look like colored jewels. Sometimes, there are experiences in life that from your vantage point may seem confusing, alarming, or worrisome. Or there may be events that look insignificant from where you are standing right now. Try seeing them from another point of view. How does the situation look now? Try burying your face in the grass and looking at the world from a bug’s vantage point. Explore your home as if you were a small child. Take a ride in a small aircraft and experience the world from a bird’s eye view. Just as kneeling down or standing on a chair can help you find a lost object, so can seeing a broader or the more focused picture help you find wisdom or hidden treasures. In doing so, you’ll experience a very different world.

a thought for the day from OM

September 8, 2008
Trying To Please Others Living For Ourselves

Most of us come to a point in our lives when we question why we are doing what we are doing, and many of us come to realize that we may be living our lives in an effort to make our parents happy. This realization can dawn when we are in our 20s, our 40s, or even later, depending upon how tight a hold our family of origin has on our psyche. We may feel shocked or depressed by this information, but we can trust that it is coming to us at this time because we are ready to find out what it would mean to live our lives for ourselves, following the call of our own soul, and refusing any longer to be beholden to someone else’s expectations. One of the most common reasons we are so tied into making our parents, or others, happy, is that we were not properly mirrored when we were children. We were not honored as individuals in our own right, with a will and purpose of our own, to be determined by our own unfolding. As a result, we learned to look outside of ourselves for approval, support, and direction rather than look within. The good news is that the part of us that was not adequately nurtured is still there, inside us, like a seed that has not yet received the sunlight and moisture it needs to open and to allow its inner contents to unfurl. It is never too late to provide ourselves with what we need to awaken this inner being. There are many ways to create a safe container for ourselves so that we can turn within and shine the light of awareness there. We may join a support group, go to therapy, or start a practice of journaling every day for half an hour. This experience of becoming is well worth the difficult work that may be required of us to get there. In whatever process we choose, we may feel worse before we feel better, but we will ultimately find out how to live our lives for ourselves and how to make ourselves happy.

alexei

one of the great things about being on antidepressants for 11 years has been the fact that many of my phobias have lessened. gone away, no, but lessened, yes. these are things like my fear of heights, bridges over water, insects of most sorts, and especially SPIDERS. so, better living through chemistry i say. and this is good, for now i have to deal with alexei.

despite drugs, spiders can freak me out a bit, especially if they are anywhere near my hair or my face. meg tells the tale of the time i was driving the car and a spider dropped down next to my head and hand by the drivers side. my instinct was to get away from it...so i steered the car over 2 lanes to do so. silly me...

i went to clean the cat pan the other day and almost walked right into alexei...a giant black and gold writing spider. alexei (and don't ask why i named it that) was sitting squat in the middle of a huge web that covered the entire side door by the garbage can. i don't generally see spiders during the day, so to be faced with alexei, literally almost eye to eye, was a shock. the next shock was the size of the web and the fact that i now had a dilemma...how to get out of the door.

alexei did not move much, even when i moved the door back and forth to chase him out. his web was going to hell in a hand basket due to my vigorous efforts, but the spider was not giving up the neighborhood. big problem. the shortest route to cat litter and the trash can was right through that door, and now i was being blocked by an extremely large, determined daytime spider.

the obvious thing to have done would to have just killed it. however, despite my initial horror, some part of me thought this was cool. alexei had already written in the web, a long north to south white zigzag. i had only had one writing spider before, and hadn't been much on enjoying it because of was so scared of it getting in my hair. i got to thinking about it, and decided to let the spider be. i would just have to make some adjustments to the situation.

the cat litter and oooper scoopers have been moved right up to the base of that door. i can open the door and drag what i need in and then push it back out. the spider is somewhat displaced with the door opening, but isn't the life of a spider spent taking up the web and putting it back? in this case, that is not true. alexei's web stays up all the time, and he has caught a couple of juicy somethings in there that he has proceeded to consume. do insects leave skeletons? he had one captured critter in there for a day and then it was gone. maybe alexei carried the carcass somewhere and disposed of the evidence. in any case, he must be full because his web has been a tangled mess since yesterday when i opened the door to do the cat pans. he has not seemed to terribly interested in rebuilding or writing. right now he has yet another treat (i think) tangled up in what is left of the web. i am thinking maybe this is a retarded spider. either that, or it is stoned on some sort of insect brownie...

austin is mortified of spiders and won't even sit on the front porch because he is afraid of the WEBS. i can understand why he would retreat from that porch at night...you know it is time to go in the house when about 50 of them descend, almost on cue, straight down from their daytime cubbyholes in the roof. almost like an arachnid army of repellers, they silently drop down to begin the evening events. i have yet to have one go too far and land in my hair (still phobic about that), but even i don't want to take the risk, so i too will retreat when i see them.

i took austin to the side door and showed him alexei and he was a bit taken aback. i told him that i didn't plan to kill the spider and had made temporary arrangements concerning the cat litter and do do patrol. i am sure that now i will be taking over that chore, or at least i will have to be the one to duck down and drag the stuff inside the house by going under alexei and his web...

again, i could kill it, but i am finding myself wandering to the door to just look at what he has done with the web itself. it is sort of arachnid art, and i have found myself checking it a couple of times a day, sort like spider email...

at some point i suspect i will actually take the new camera out of the box and post a picture of alexei. hopefully, he will get sober and do a good art piece for me to preserve on film...

some observations...

just a few thoughts...

• why can't politicians just concentrate upon what a candidate is going to do vs. having to slog the other candidate? what would happen if we ran an election where a candidate refused to engage in the word assassination? that is the reason i have no interest in the conventions. how many more times am i going to hear about john mccain not knowing how many houses his wife owns? i don't like mccain, but why is this important?
• going to a concert sure has changed...a lot. back in the 60's and 70's, what did you do for an encore besides cheering? you stood on your chair and lit your bic lighter (which you had because you smoked cigarettes during or before the concert, or you were smoking wacky tobaccy). today, no fire in the concert hall. so instead we have a new light...thousands of...CELL PHONES! only in america...
• and speaking of concerts, my bud, mary beth, made the astute comment that back in the day we weren't drinking beer at concerts. therefore, there was no need to keep stepping over everyone so you could go to the bathroom or buy more beer. as she put it, back in the day you just smoked some dope or drank some LIQUOR and that eliminated the need to have to take a leak and disrupt everyone. and no one passes the beer communally!
• how can it be that the measure of a person's life could come down to the last few months of a troubled life, enough so that administrators might discourage the establishment of a scholarship in that person's name? shocking that people who call themselves christians could be so callous as to NOT attend that faithful employee's funeral or accept the offer of scholarship money for graduating seniors in that employees name. i am trying hard not to stay angry...
• it takes a long, long time to get comfortable with silence. in my case, days. i have gone for 6 days with no tv other than a short view of the weather channel and the sox/yankees game in the background as i worked on the computer last night. for an adhd type like myself, it really is best to have silence and alone time.
• school and coffee go together. i am back on the columbian dark bean wagon since going back to work this week.
• is there something wrong with a woman who doesn't like babies? if so, i am a freak of nature in yet another catagory...
• online classes? i will find out if that works as well as being in a classroom, as i am headed off into that area of cyberspace in three weeks. i have been a fan of the book, no question, but i am now reading an online book. i am not sure i like that.
• why can't i find a hard copy of the san francisco chronicle sunday on the east coast? surely there are dislocated san franciscans who get it somewhere!
• having a creative outlet is something that i really need to pursue. i don't think i have been myself since i abandoned my pottery classes 2 years ago. i am thinking i will go back this fall and go back to my jewelry. i keep saying that, but after these days of silence where i can think a little more, i am seeing the need to engage in something for myself, and not for my child.
• i am thankful for the things i have.

a day of unpeeling...

for the last 24 hours i have not had the television on and have been pretty much alone and silent in my house. it is just me and the girls.

the phone has not rung except once from my brother last night and my father today. i have tried to talk to austin, but he has been rude and mad. he said he is going to stay at his dad's next week. i alternate between trying to bring him home and letting him stay there. it is better for me that he is away anyway. if he were here, i would not be in my hermit, silent mode.

i got up early today and stayed awake. i have been relatively productive, doing a lot of reading of the paper, old local magazines from santa fe that i hadn't had a chance to read, some steinbeck stuff from a biography that i had checked out. i made lentils and rice, tomatoes/cukes, boiled cabbage, gazpacho. i cut up the green peppers that were left from the produce stand and froze them. i cleaned the counters 10000 times...i scratched a lot of cat heads and rubbed a lot of backs...

i went to sleep last night listening to public radio, aaron copeland's "appalachian spring" and i turned it on when i got up this morning and it has stayed on all day. i have heard the sounds of swing, riverwalk jazz, world music, NPR, a local talk show about autism, the best of the rivanna sessions of A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, page wilson's downhome mongrel music show, and now mountain home stage. i haven't really been consciously listening...it has been comforting background for my thoughts and mood. listening to radio vs. putting in a cd makes me feel somehow connected to the world, and it also is something i can't control as far as what i hear. everything is a surprise and new, and something about that appeals to me.

i didn't go anywhere except out on my deck to eat half of a BLT and watch the sun go down.

i sat out there by myself for probably an hour just listening to the sounds, which i realized i could not identify. what kind of insect is that? it isn't crickets or katydids. it was actually cool out there, enough so that i went in and got a green zippered sweatshirt that doris gave me the last xmas before she died. i picked it deliberately because it reminded me of her. why do i still get sad and cry when i think about her? i guess it is because, despite the differences in our personalities, she was one of the few who seemed genuinely happy to see me and took the time to buy things for me that she had given some thought to. i could drop in on her anytime and she was glad to see me.

while i was looking up at the sky, i noticed a single, dim star and it reminded me of the godolphin fantasy of when i was a child. i saw a falling star and i saw a satellite, two things that you rarely see here. i was asking a higher power to help me get myself centered. i haven't been in such a long time, and i am as twisted up as my back. i want to feel connected to something bigger, and i know it is there, but i think i myself have put up the barriers myself somehow. i am disconnected from my creative juices. i am no longer doing pottery, and i have dropped the jewelry making as well. i have done a piss poor job of making my fountains, gardening, or landscaping. i just don't seem to have the energy to put into any of these things that normally make me feel good about myself. why is that? is it the fibro? is it menopause? or is it just me running from me?

boy, i am soooo flawed. but that is ok. i have always been different. i just have to find a way to accept who i am and do what is best to make me a good, agreeable person. that usually comes from being with people who are positive. however, i don't have much contact with people anymore, and most of my friends are married, have other interests and lives, and i am certainly not a priority.

despite what i have written, i am feeling a bit better. i am sort of the onion right now, and know i won't get it all peeled this weekend. i have to have the right circumstances to do that, and that doesn't happen much...and i can never sustain them anyway. but it is ok to think about it and try...